Monthly Archives: August 2013

U.S. spying still under shadow of Iraq intelligence failures

Posted on by

“In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq 10 years ago, the CIA and other intelligence services confidently asserted that Saddam Hussein’s regime had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But it turned out the intelligence community was ‘dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,’ according to an official inquiry, the Silberman-Robb report. The spy services failed to collect solid information, botched their analysis and reached conclusions based on flawed assumptions instead of evidence, making it ‘one of the most public — and most damaging — intelligence failures in recent American history,’ the 2005 report said.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/15/u-s-spying-still-under-shadow-of-iraq-intelligence-failures/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Leaked documents show massive expansion of CIA budget

Posted on by

“The CIA has mushroomed into the largest US spy agency with a nearly $15 billion budget as it expands intelligence, cyber sabotage and overseas covert operations, secret leaked documents showed Thursday. It shows a dramatic resurgence of the Central Intelligence Agency, once thought to be on the decline after it acknowledged intelligence failures prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.  It now is the dominant colossus within the national intelligence community, expanding its workforce by more than 25 percent from a decade ago, to 21,575 this year.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/29/leaked-documents-show-massive-expansion-of-cia-budget/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Washington Post: U.S. $53 billion ‘Black budget’ details leaked by Snowden

Posted on by

“U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion ‘black budget’ for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. The Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_print.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

NSA’s Prism Could Cost Global IT Service Market $180 Billion

Posted on by

“James Staten, a Forrester analyst who follows IT services, argued in a blog post Wednesday that financial losses could prove substantially higher when other market segments are considered.  In calculating his higher estimate, Mr. Staten said that in addition to the $35 billion estimated by the ITIF, vendors of hosting and outsourcing services – which offer many of the same services as cloud companies, but use different processes and revenue models — could suffer an additional $100 billion in lost business. Moreover, non-U.S. cloud service providers could lose $35 billion worth of business from international customers, as awareness grows of the surveillance activities of other governments.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/08/16/nsas-prism-could-cost-it-service-market-180-billion/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

The Trick to Suppressing Revolution: Keeping Debt/Tax Serfdom Bearable

Posted on by

CHS9a1

“In a way, a belief in the value, transparency, trust and reciprocity of the System is like a religious belief. The converts, the true believers, are the ones who work like crazy for the company or the service. And when the veil of illusion is tugged from their eyes, then the Believer does a reversal, and becomes a devout non-believer in the System. He or she drops out, moves to a lower position, or ‘retires’ to some lower level of employment. At what point do people choose to opt out of debt/tax-serfdom? What triggers their decision to renounce debt, go off the financial grid, and escape serfdom by fashioning a low-cost lifestyle in the cash economy?”

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.de/2013/05/the-trick-to-suppressing-revolution.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Expedia – Vacation Deprivation Key Statistics

Posted on by

“Americans earn fewer vacation days than people in most countries, but still leave 2 days unused on average.  Know someone who could use a break?”

http://www.expedia.com/p/info-other/vacation_deprivation.htm

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Global Cities of the Super-Rich

Posted on by

“The report also ranks the global cities that matter the most to these high-net-worth individuals, based on four categories: economic activity, political power, quality of life, and knowledge and influence. Overall, New York and London top this list as well, followed by Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Zurich. This list is similar to my own ranking of the world’s most economically powerful cities. The cities are also ranked on each category individually, and the table below (from the report) charts the leaders in each of the four categories.”

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/03/global-cities-super-rich/4951/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Luxembourg says No to new EU tax law

Posted on by

“Luxembourg, one of the EU’s smallest but richest countries, has said No to a new law  against tax evasion. The European Commission has been trying to update its anti-tax-fraud legislation for the past eight years. Its 2005 law forces member states to automatically exchange information on EU nationals’ deposits in other European Union countries. But it contains gaps on income received via investment funds, pensions, trusts and foundations. It also contains a big hole on Austria and Luxembourg. The two financial centres are exempt from automatic exchange until such time as five non-EU tax havens – Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino and Switzerland – agree to it as well.”

http://euobserver.com/economic/120115

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Interactive map of which countries exchange tax information

Posted on by

“The Exchange of Tax Information Portal is an initiative of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. The Global Forum conducts peer reviews of its member jurisdictions’ ability to co-operate with other tax administrations in accordance with the internationally agreed standard. The standard provides for exchange of information on request where it is foreseeably relevant to the administration and enforcement of the domestic tax laws of the requesting jurisdiction”

http://eoi-tax.org/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Who Hides Money Outside The Country?

Posted on by

“Marvin Van Horn and his wife live in New Zealand, where they have a checking account and retirement savings. They weren’t intentionally hiding anything from the IRS. But he heard a story on the radio about offshore tax cheats — and realized that the rules might apply to him. So he decided to go through the IRS’s voluntary disclosure program. He learned he would have to pay back taxes for six years, which came to about $20,000. That seemed fair, he said. But then there was the penalty: $172,000. Somewhere between five and seven million U.S. citizens live abroad. Fewer than 1 million of them declare offshore accounts, as required by law.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/14/183969195/who-hides-money-outside-the-country

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet